Help with dramatic conclusions

[Squinky]

Hi folks,

So I haven't made a game in forever, but man have I written a lot of them. One thing I have always been bad at is writing an ending....

Now this may be because I am a poor planner, and I like to keep the game options open as I go, sometimes when you actually make a room it presents more opportunities that when you first wrote about it after all...

But I think a lot of it comes down to my inability to make solving puzzles climatic. In a lot of stories, the ending is when you confront the bad guy and fight it out. Every game I make involves getting past barriers to the final scene, and then say, using an axe to cut down a tree on the bad guy.....

Any advice on this? How have you guys dealt with the "final fight" scenes?

Thanks for any help.

[SilverSpook]

Make it a long, overcomplicated series of button pushes, lever pulls, power-ons, and cooling system-offs, and involve destroying a 200,000 square foot facility!

Kind of being facetious, but also kind of factual, statistically.

Or as MPAA says, "Go big or go home!"

[Snarky]

Never finished a game here, so take this for what it's worth:

-Try to identify what your game is about, at its core, and make sure the final puzzle revolves around that. For example, The Shiva is about Rabbi Stone's crisis of faith, and the final puzzle is all about proving that you're a better rabbi than the villain. (Even if the last click you have to do is pretty much "use axe to cut down tree on top of bad guy")
-If you can link the final puzzle back to something much earlier in the game, that will provide a nice sense of closure. The classic example is of course Monkey Island 2 (where you have to make another voodoo doll, now under much more difficult conditions), but it could be something much simpler, like finally getting to use an item or piece of information you've had throughout the game.

So if the theme of your game is growing up, and your character is a child who's been carrying a stuffed animal throughout the game, maybe the last puzzle could require you to sacrifice your plushie. Even if the puzzle is functionally the same as it would have been otherwise, it will feel more meaningful, and therefore more satisfying to players.

[Cuiki]

your character is a child who's been carrying a stuffed animal throughout the game, maybe the last puzzle could require you to sacrifice your plushie.

Hahaha! That's exactly what I originally planned to do in my last OROW game!

[ManicMatt]

I guess ive made two games to be somewhat semi qualified to give my two pieces o' eight!

Limbo has a different final scene than planned. There was going to be a playable limbo area with the bad guy unaware of your presence, and you would solve puzzles to defeat him. But the game was way overdue and i just wanted it finished before it got abandoned a second time. So instead you merely have a chat with the bad guy and then when you say bye a cutscene plays of the victory. (trying not to give spoilers)

[Snarky]

... and what did you learn from that? Is it a good way to do an ending, or did it compromise the climax? When do you think it's best to diverge from what you had planned, and when is it best to stick with it?

[LostTrainDude]

Lately I can't help but think that a well designed timing puzzle could represent a great boss fight in adventure games, because it breaks the usual flow of the genre and provides more "dramatic tension", if you will.

Off the top of my head, think, for instance, about Full Throttle (not really a spoiler, but anyway...):

Spoiler

The ending section has a nice set of small\medium timing puzzles that, in my opinion, greatly increase the pace and the dramatic effect

[close]

[ManicMatt]

Yeah i guess i sort of lost where I was going with that! I still would have liked a final gameplay section, but i have lovely satisfying animations that kick ass, and hopefully feels rewarding to the player to see.

[ManicMatt]

As for diverging or not from the plan, I think thats not a bad thing. If I tried to stick to a longer game, I might have wanted another break and the game STILL wouldnt be finished now. Art of course, should never be rushed, which is why even though the game was shortened, i didnt want it to come across as rushed, using little or no new assets (sprites, animation, backgrounds etc) then the player might feel cheated. So this tells me the ending needs to be just as epic as the start!

[Babar]

Another "dramatic" boss battle ending in an adventure game was from the much-maligned King's Quest V. I thought the final battle puzzle was quite nice, and was (as far as I can tell, if you had read a certain book beforehand in-game) self-contained. Was a battle of magic, with spells and counterspells- A concept I'd like to have seen a lot more in video games (in some way more in-depth than strafing and firing fireballs or ice spells at a Lich King while keeping up your own shield spell).